LIVERPOOL MP Peter Kilfoyle has accused Cherie Blair of inventing her poverty-stricken childhood in the city in a scathing review of her infamous autobiography.

The Walton MP also takes Tony Blair’s wife to task for moaning about their income when he was a backbench MP in the 1980s – when unemployment was soaring.

And he criticises Ms Blair for having “misspoken” in the book – a kind word for wild exaggeration, made famous by Hilary Clinton during the US presidential race.

The review is the first time a well-known public figure has dis-puted Ms Blair’s version of her up-bringing, by a single mother, in a poor, working-class neighbourhood in Crosby.

Dismissing the autobiography as full of “gossip and social froth”, Mr Kilfoyle wrote: “She talks of the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth sailing from the Mersey. They never did – Southampton was their home port.

“She makes much of her poor childhood but, by the standards of Liverpool then, that was not the case, hard although it was for her mother to bring up two girls alone.

“After all, she had holidays as a child, living in a very pleasant part of Liverpool. Not for her the pover-ty without hope of the inner city.”

Turning to Ms Blair’s later life. Mr Kilfoyle noted: “The book re-veals a woman who is insecure and has appalling judgment.

“Cherie constantly complains that her financial situation is not what it ought to be. When Tony became an MP, his income went down from £80,000 to £20,000.

“Given that she was also working at the Bar, I was mystified as to how she saw this as a struggle back in 1983 when printers and miners were facing Thatcher’s axe and the dole queue.”

Mr Kilfoyle went from being Tony Blair’s campaign manager during the 1994 Labour leadership race to quitting his government post to become one of New Labour’s fiercest critic.